For the Xilinx ISE installation, you will need about 15GB of free space (on top of the installer download).

Install either “ISE WebPACK” or “ISE Design Suite: System Edition”. If you will register with Xilinx and obtain your own free WebPACK license, install WebPACK. If you want to use the class license, then you can install ISE Design Suite: System Edition which has more powerful functionality and allows larger devices to be programmed. (It's not clear if we would ever use this additional functionality in the class.)

Choose to “Acquire or manage a license key” (default)

Install the “Cable drivers” but not “WinPCAP for Ethernet hardware co-simulation” (we will be downloading FPGA configuration over USB using Digilent's ADEPT program; at the moment it is not clear if we need the Xilinx cable drivers….)

The installation could take 60 minutes and expand to an astounding additional 12GB of disk space .

If you installed WebPACK, choose “Get free ISE WebPACK license” for the license option. If you installed System Edition, then follow instructions sent by email for using our floating license server.

Register with Xilinx to get your free license file “Xilinx.lic”. Save it and use “Copy license” in the Xilinx license manager to use the the license.

FAQ

How can I program the BASYS2 using the PC connection, rather than loading it onto the PROM?
You need to generate a programming file with a slightly different startup clock option. See http://www.digilentinc.com/Support/FAQs.cfm under the item “When I am using Export to program an FPGA I receive the error “startup clock for this file is CCLK instead of JTAG-CLK, problems will likely occur.” What do I do?” Then use the top option in Adept to load the resulting bit file directly into the FPGA. It only requires a couple of seconds to load the bit file this way, compared to 30s to reprogram the PROM.

Which on-board clock should I use?
You can use B8 which is the 50MHz clock source.